In that same vein, are we going to see commercial spaces have parking built into the lot designs, perhaps affected by how lanes are delineated by the player? One thing that's 'off' to me in the SC4 aesthetic is that you don't see the kind of parking arrangements around bigger commercial spaces that are standard in many urban areas, especially in the US. Where the hell are all those shoppers supposed to be parking?

I think I recall seeing some others inquire about this, but I don't recall seeing it discussed in any depth. Apologies if I'm retreading.

That makes me think that lot generation could be pretty heavily based on its surrounding and look at how people are getting to these places. Have lots of transportation, a big bus infrastructure, and way less road focus? Your buildings are going to generate much more dense, they'll have less parking and look more pedestrian friendly with bigger sidewalks and things like outdoor cafes.

On the opposite end, if the lot looks at the surroundings and sees giant 6 lane roads, a distinct lack of a transportation, etc, it's going to build more suburban looking buildings like strip-malls with big parking lots and single family homes with large yards.

It would be super awesome to me to watch a city react as you change its infrastructure. A new tram line runs through a suburban shopping district, maybe it cuts a couple lanes off of a giant stroad and connects a popular dense residential area to the shopping district. As the game looks at new demands and looks at rebuilding lots it sees that less people are arriving by car. Not all of the stip-malls just disappear, but the parking lots start getting smaller as more business fills them in. Some of them are just replaced with some new more pedestrian conscious buildings.

After that you add a couple bus lines that run service into the surrounding suburbs and that tram now runs right into the CBD of your city. The game looks again at the change in transportation and decides to boost the density again, and you're starting to see something like the transit-oriented development in Arlington VA where you have these clusters of high density around transportation that taper off in the surrounding areas. and as you continue to add more transportation in the area the city density responds accordingly.

Parking lots would make a good ordinance. If you want cars to go directly to their destination, require every store to maintain its own parking lot. This will make for sparse suburban style concrete wastelands. For denser inner city or Eurostyle towns, don't require parking lots for each store, and rely on plopped parking lots/towers-- then cars will have to go park first, and then walk/bus/tram/subway from there.

I think this would be better done more contextually rather then an overall city ordinance that way you can give neighborhoods more distinct characteristics rather then it just being overall. Dense urban cores, New hip transit influenced neighborhoods and sprawling suburbs all together.

That makes me think of another thing, I'd like to see neighborhoods that change characteristics maintain some of their old features. A lot of us cities have converted their old empty industrial buildings into commercial and residential lofts and maintain the original style. It's be cool if changing the land use didn't have to destroy the existing building it might have a chance of re purposing that building